Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Jewish culture. Here, you’ll learn about the latest (and sometimes earliest) in Jewish art, music, film, theater, books as well as the secret Jewish history of everything and everyone from The Rolling Stones to…
Culture
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Film & TV In ‘The Rehearsal’ season 2, is Nathan Fielder serious?
The comedian is out to solve an epidemic of airplane crashes — will the world listen?
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Of Steven Spielberg, the Shvitz, Langston Hughes and 11 Other Things About Jewish Ohio
1) 148,680 Jews live in Ohio, representing 1.3% of the state’s population. 2) Ohio is the state with the eighth largest Jewish population — more than Texas, less than Maryland. 3) The first two Jewish families to reside in the capital city of Columbus were the Nusbaums and the Gundersheimers, both from the Bavarian village…
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New York Times Columnist Roger Cohen Opens Up in Family Memoir
The Girl from Human Street By Roger Cohen Knopf, 320 pages, $27.95 “The journalist moves in the opposite direction from the crowd, toward danger, often leaving the settled majority perplexed,” writes Roger Cohen in the opening pages of his deeply penetrating memoir about his mother. Cohen, a London-based New York Times columnist, is a former…
The Latest
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Henry Geldzahler Gets Another 15 Minutes of Fame
Tucked away in a corner of Chelsea is some of the most important art ever to be shown in New York. Or, at least, it was once upon a time. The show at the Paul Kasmin Gallery may not seem any more significant than the collections on view in Chelsea’s other galleries, but all the…
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Will the Real Adolf Hitler Please Stand Up?
Incongruous as it may initially sound, “What’s in a name?” Shakespeare’s immortal line from “Romeo and Juliet” lies at the core of Matt Ogens’s endearingly offbeat documentary “Meet the Hitlers.” In the play, Juliet Capulet famously raises the question to declare that the stigma associated with the surname of her lover, Romeo Montague, will not…
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A Museum as Big as Texas
Perhaps surprisingly, the newly launched National Center for Jewish Art doesn’t reside on the East Coast, in California, or in Chicago. Instead, it is housed at Dallas’s Museum of Biblical Art, which lives up to its state’s reputation for enormity. Even excluding Gib Singleton’s soon-to-be-installed, huge outdoor “Via Dolorosa” installation, the museum boasts 30,000 square…
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‘Gett’ Depicts an Orthodox Universe That Is Beyond Kafkasque
“Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem” is a plea on behalf of agunot, women whose husbands refuse to grant them a religious divorce. It is an indictment of the Israeli justice system, which doesn’t provide for civil marriage or its dissolution, and of the rabbinical courts that do hold such powers. Most of all, the…
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Books Benjamin Netanyahu Says Packing Israel Prize Needed To Weed Out ‘Extremist’ Writers
Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday addressed the clash over the Israel Prize for Literature and the makeup of the panel that awards it by saying that more extremist, anti-Zionist judges have been appointed in recent years. “The composition of the panel that selects Israel Prize laureates must be balanced and faithfully reflect the…
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What Bob Dylan Owes to Frank Sinatra — and Vice-Versa
In the summer of 1966, Frank Sinatra passed a baton to Bob Dylan. Not literally, of course: it’s hard to imagine, at that point in their lives, the two men being in the same physical space. Sinatra had been the most important figure in American popular music for twenty-five years: from his bobbysoxer days with…
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Rhode Island’s Best Spot to Find a Decent Corned Beef Sandwich May Be Doomed
By many measures, Jews have thrived in Rhode Island. Two have been elected to the state’s highest office, including the late Bruce Sundlun (governor from 1991 to 1995), whose resume also included a Purple Heart, a Légion d’Honneur from France and the Prime Minister’s Medal from Israel. Others have launched some of the state’s most…
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Bob Dylan, Known for Silence on Stage, Speaks for 40 Minutes at Tribute
(Reuters) — Bob Dylan, known for playing concerts with barely a word spoken to his audience, gave a lengthy speech on Friday at a gala in his honor where he chronicled the roots of his music while also praising and ribbing famous figures. The 73-year-old Dylan, considered by many musicians and critics to be the…
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Of Touro Synagogue, Hasbro and 10 Other Things About Jewish Rhode Island
1) Eighteen thousand and five hundred Jews live in Rhode Island — about 1.75% of the state’s population. 2) The central courtyard at Providence’s Roger Williams National Memorial was donated in 1931 by Jerome Hahn, in memory of his father, Isaac Hahn, the first Jewish citizen to hold elected office in the city. 3) Newport’s…
Most Popular
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Opinion The dangerous Nazi legend behind Trump’s ruthless grab for power
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Culture Did this Jewish literary titan have the right idea about Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling after all?
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Opinion A Holocaust perpetrator was just celebrated on US soil. I think I know why no one objected.
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Opinion I first met Netanyahu in 1988. Here’s how he became the most destructive leader in Israel’s history.
In Case You Missed It
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Culture In Germany, a Jewish family is reunited with a treasured family object — but also a sense of exile
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Opinion Trump’s heedless approach to an Iran deal could be a big problem for Israel
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Fast Forward In NYC, Itamar Ben-Gvir says he’s changed — and wants ‘the Trump plan’ in Gaza
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Opinion Itamar Ben-Gvir’s visit to a Jewish society at Yale exposed deep rifts between US Jews
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